Picturing ourselves in the world: Drawings, interpretative phenomenological analysis and the relational mapping interview

Zoë V.R. Boden, Michael Larkin, Malvika Iyer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Some aspects of experience can be challenging for research participants to verbalise. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) researchers need to get experience-near to meet their phenomenological commitments, capturing the “texture” and quality of existence, and placing participants in relation to events, objects, others, and the world. Incorporating drawing into IPA designs provides a vehicle through which participants can better explore and communicate their lifeworlds. IPA researchers also require rich accounts to fulfil their interpretative commitments. Drawing taps into multiple sensory registers simultaneously, providing polysemous data, which in turn lends itself to hermeneutic analysis. This article outlines a multimodal method, the relational mapping interview, which was developed to understand the relational context of various forms of distress and disruption. We illustrate how the approach results in richly nuanced visual and verbal accounts of relational experience. Drawing on an “expanded hermeneutic phenomenology,” we suggest how visual data can be analysed within an IPA framework to offer significant experiential insights.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)218-236
JournalQualitative Research in Psychology
Volume16
Issue number2
Early online date30 Nov 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 3 Apr 2019

Bibliographical note

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Qualitative Research in Psychology on 30 Nov 2018, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14780887.2018.1540679

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